NUTHIN’ BUT A G THANG

It’s genuinely hard, at times, to know just how seriously to take Arsenal. The highs tend to be very high and the lows are usually, well, some sort of pithy comment about the Mariana Trench, and then there are things like this that you’d hope for their sake to be a mean prank emanating from the other end of Seven Sisters Road but deep down know to be the work of people with Jeremy Usborne levels of delusion. They’re an excitable bunch, that’s for certain, and there’s nothing more exciting than a visit from football’s last bastion of purity, Qatar Airways’ very own “Barça”.

“Why not win this game?” pouted Olivier Giroud, inadvertently providing the inspiration for a forthcoming episode of Pointless. In general, though, caution has been the buzzword – understandable given that this, with the heroic late show against 10-man Leicester followed by that frustrating blank against Hull ‘B’, has been that most Arsenalish of weeks. Arsène Wenger himself admits that he is “more concerned about stopping them scoring” in the first leg and that Arsenal, who tend to have much less trouble rousing themselves for matches of this kind than visits from their perceived inferiors, will be required to “raise the urgency level”.

The task, against a team that has not been beaten in 32 games, seems thankless ... and yet. Football fandom might not quite have jumped the shark back in 2011 but bars have been spitted over less than Arsenal’s last meeting with footballing sainthood. That night, an XI featuring Johan Djourou, Emmanuel Eboué and Alex Song had strained every sinew to restrict Guardiola-era Barcelona to a solitary goal before the cavalry arrived in the indomitable forms of Nicklas Bendtner and eventual matchwinner Andrey Arshavin. Never mind that Bendtner fluffed his lines in a one-sided rematch.

It would, on several levels, be deeply unfair to flick through the current Arsenal squad and ask who might be this year’s Arshavin. Joel Campbell might be a candidate if he hadn’t done a decent job of covering his full-back last time out; there’d be a shout for Theo Walcott but you sense he actually quite enjoys football. Alexis Sánchez – “Luis Suárez Lite”, as he’s fondly known in Catalonia – is probably the most likely to provide inspiration for new rhyming exploits but Wenger has suggested that being fired up for the occasion “doesn’t mean he will be in the right zone”. Calmness, equanimity and good sense, then, are the order of the evening – along with a nice, healthy dose of realism. If The Fiver had to make a prediction, it would go thus: ecstatic-and-in-no-way-premature rap battles up and down the Holloway Road at 10pm, followed by another long, pitch-black night of the soul at Camp Nou three weeks from now. Neither of which would solve our opening conundrum.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Now, in 2016, it seems that every player wants to come to China for the same reasons. [All the money] will make the clubs much stronger. Maybe 10 or 15 years ahead, I’m sure China’s national team will compete well [enough] to win the World Cup” – Sven-Goran Eriksson, who presumably only took over at Shanghai SIPG for footballing reasons, gets a little bit ahead of himself. Stop us if you think that you’ve heard this one before.

FIVER LETTARRGGHHHHHS!

“I hate to do this, but … Ben Jones’s ‘an infamous smuggling route in less (fewer!) than 12 parsecs’ (yesterday’s Fiver letters) was just asking for trouble. Fewer is considered wrong by the pedant community in this case because parsec is a subdividable unit and fewer is typically considered to apply to quantities that are not subdividable such as items in a shopping basket. If the question of indivisibility of this example arises, I should think The Fiver is well aware of how narky they get if you try to subdivide a four-pack of Purple Tin in order to ensure the correct balance between economy and oblivion is maintained, and can vouch for me on this one. Calls himself a pedant and he can’t even get the first question on the pedantry entrance exam correct. Tchuh” – Louise Wright.

“A couple of questions for Ben on his attempt to quell confusion regarding a certain Star Wars kerfuffle. If the Kessel Run is a route as he states in his email, then the starships being judged on the route they take is a nonsense, as they’d all take the same route (the Kessel Run) and presumably either take the same amount of time too, or one could be faster than the other and you’d measure that time in something other than parsecs. I will let him off with that though, and move on with what seems like the more pertinent point. The whole parsecs thing was clearly a mistake George Lucas made which was then cleared up with some handy retconning in either the next film or one of the expanded universe novels as were, which makes it seem pretty fair game for this sort of gaffe hunting. Also, and I’m aware I’ve added to the problem, this email thread is tired even for The Fiver’s letters page” – Robbie Georgeson.

“If the hyper drive was responsible for the calculations that resulted in the Kessel Run covering a distance of 12 parsecs (a measly 228 trillion miles), then why does Han Solo boast about it as if it was his own personal achievement? It’s not like he built the Millennium Falcon and its hyper drive personally – we all know he won it from Lando Calrissian in a card game. Either way, Han’s boasting is entirely inappropriate” – Dan Makeham.

“Shaquille O’Neal recently came out as a Northampton Town fan (Fiver passim). Is this the start of a wider US celebrity interest in our lower leagues with Kanye West subsequently appealing for vast injections of Silicon Valley cash while stating: ‘Ima fix wolves’?” – Steve Gaw.

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BITS AND BOBS

Zamalek have taken the maverick decision to name their new manger as … Alex McLeish.

Big Eck!

Zamalek!

Big Zamal-Eck!

Having failed to find takers for his alluring see-through polling booths, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan has asked Fifa to postpone the presidential election. Fifa’s refusal to consider the booths “bears no rationale other than denying any right to a fair and transparent voting process”, he huffed.

Manchester United beat League One strugglers Shrewsbury Town 3-0. “I think we have done it fantastically,” parped Louis van Gaal.

Borussia Dortmund midfielder Sven Bender has signed a contract extension that will keep him at the club until 2021. “I would be happy if in the coming weeks other team mates follow suit,” he pleaded.

The Queen’s Celtic have been stung – well, lightly grazed – by a fine of more than £10,000 for misconduct by both their players and firework-slinging fans at their Big Vase match against Fenerbahce in December.

And police have made an arrest in relation to the coin-related furore that capped West Brom’s FA Cup loss to Reading on Saturday.